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| - The Alaska Aces are a minor league ice hockey team in Anchorage, Alaska. They were originally part of the West Coast Hockey League, but when the WCHL was absorbed by the East Coast Hockey League in 2003, the team joined the merged ECHL. In 2005, the Aces joined an affiliation with the St. Louis Blues of the National Hockey League and the Peoria Rivermen of the American Hockey League. The Aces official team mascot is Boomer, a polar bear. Aces fans are known for using small, ceremonial cow bells painted with the Aces insignia to show their support during games.
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| abstract
| - The Alaska Aces are a minor league ice hockey team in Anchorage, Alaska. They were originally part of the West Coast Hockey League, but when the WCHL was absorbed by the East Coast Hockey League in 2003, the team joined the merged ECHL. In 2005, the Aces joined an affiliation with the St. Louis Blues of the National Hockey League and the Peoria Rivermen of the American Hockey League. The Aces official team mascot is Boomer, a polar bear. Aces fans are known for using small, ceremonial cow bells painted with the Aces insignia to show their support during games. Originally an amateur club known as the Anchorage Aces, they won the National Amateur Championship in 1993 and 1994. They finished second in 1992 and 1995. Anchorage was an original WCHL franchise, joining the league in 1995. In 2002, with financial troubles, the team was put up for sale on eBay. They were renamed the Alaska Aces in 2003. The team gained national prominence in 2004 when it signed New Jersey Devils all-star and Alaska-born Scott Gomez after the NHL lockout, who went on to lead the ECHL in scoring and win league Most Valuable Player honors. Home games are played at Sullivan Arena in Anchorage. The triple overtime win against Las Vegas Wranglers (2006) was the third longest game in ECHL history, 113 minutes, 30 seconds long. In 2006, the Aces became only the second team in ECHL history (joining the South Carolina Stingrays of Charleston, SC) in winning both the Brabham Cup and Kelly Cup championships in the same season. (In 2008, the Cincinnati Cyclones became the third team to accomplish this feat.) The Aces play in the West Division of the ECHL's National Conference. In 2006, Alaska won the Kelly Cup title in five games over the Gwinnett Gladiators. This was the first professional sports title won by an Alaska team since 1980. Mike Scott received the Kelly Cup MVP award after the Aces' 4-3 win over the Gladiators in Game Five of the series. On October 4, 2007, the Aces announced a one-year affiliation extension with St. Louis and Peoria. In 2009, the Aces stormed through the first three rounds of the Kelly Cup Playoffs, winning in five games against both the Utah Grizzlies and the Victoria Salmon Kings in the first two rounds, and sweeping the Las Vegas Wranglers in the National Conference Finals. They were in the Kelly Cup Finals for the first time since their championship season in 2006, but they lost 4 games to 3 to the South Carolina Stingrays. The ownership group of the team issued a press release on February 23, 2017 stating that the team would cease operations at the end of the 2016-17 season. The league granted the team's request for a voluntary suspension of operations. Managing partner Terry Parks said in the release as a result of the economic downturn, sponsorships are down $600,000, season ticket sales are down $262,000 and attendance is down about 1,500 spectators per game from just a couple seasons ago. The organization has lost more money this season than in the past two seasons combined. With thousands of job losses in Alaska and more likely to come, Parks says, the team expects this downward trend to continue. “We are 100 percent convinced that this town can no longer generate the kind of revenue necessary to sustain a professional hockey team,”
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